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Patents
Patent-based indicators provide a measure of the output of a country’s R&D, i.e. its inventions. The methodology used for counting patents can influence the results. Simple counts of patents filed at a national patent office are affected by various kinds of limitations, such as weak international comparability (home advantage for patent applications) and highly heterogeneous patent values. The OECD has developed triadic patent families, which are designed to capture all important inventions only and to be internationally comparable.
Definition
A patent family is defined as a set of patents taken in various countries (i.e. patent offices) to protect the same invention. Triadic patent families are a set of patents taken at all three of these major patent offices – the European Patent Office (EPO), the Japan Patent Office (JPO) and the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).
Triadic patent family counts are attributed to the country of residence of the inventor and to the date when the patent was first registered.
Comparability
The concept of triadic patent families has been developed in order to improve the international comparability and quality of patent-based indicators. Indeed, only patents applied in the same set of countries are included in the family: home advantage and influence of geographical location are therefore eliminated. Furthermore, patents included in the family are typically of higher value: patentees only take on the additional costs and delays of extending protection to other countries if they deem it worthwhile.
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Share of countries in triadic patent families Percentage, Year 2003
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Long-term trends The beginning of the 21st century was marked by a slowdown, with patent families increasing by 1% to 2% a year, following a steady growth of 6% a year on average until 2000. About 53 000 triadic patent families were filed in 2003. The United States accounts for 37.1% of the OECD total in 2003, followed by the European Union (30.9%) and Japan (26.2%). Since the mid 1990s, the United States’ share of patent families increased, whereas the relative proportion of patent families originating from Europe and Japan has tended to decrease. The ratio of triadic patent families to population identifies Finland, Switzerland, Japan, Sweden and Germany as the five most innovative countries in 2003. Finland had the highest propensity to patent, with 122 patent families per million population and Switzerland had 121. Most countries have seen their patent intensity increase over the last decade, and the largest increase occurred in Korea. By size, China has less then 0.1 patent families per million population. The numbers of triadic patent families are still insignificant for the five non-member countries shown in the table, although the numbers are growing quite rapidly in China and, to a lesser extent, in India. |
Source
- OECD (2005), OECD Science, Technology and Industry Scoreboard, OECD, Paris.
Further information
Analytical publications
- Johnson, D. (2002), The OECD Technology Concordance (OTC): Patents by Industry of Manufacture and Sector of Use, OECD Science, Technology and Industry Working Papers, No. 2002/5, OECD, Paris.
- Lichtenberg, F. and S. Virabhak (2002), Using Patents Data to Map Technical Change in Health-Related Areas, OECD Science, Technology and Industry Working Papers, No. 2002/16, OECD, Paris.
- OECD (2006), OECD Reviews of Innovation Policy – Switzerland, OECD, Paris.
Methodological publications
- Dernis, H. and M. Khan (2004), Triadic Patent Families Methodology, OECD Science, Technology and Industry Working Papers, No. 2004/2, OECD, Paris.
Online databases
Websites
- OECD Intellectual Property Rights, www.oecd.org/sti/ipr.
- OECD Work on Patents, www.oecd.org/sti/ipr-statistics.
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| • | Indicator web page |
| • | Indicator in PDF |
| Tables (xls) | |
| • | Number of triadic patent families |
| Graphics | |
| • | Number of triadic patent families |
Number of triadic patent families
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